Better Than Great
A Plenitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives
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Narrated by:
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Richard Waterhouse
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By:
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Arthur Plotnik
About this listen
A veritable "TKO of terminology", Better Than Great is the essential guide for describing the extraordinary - the must-have reference for anyone wishing to rise above tired superlatives. Deft praise encourages others to feel as we do, share our enthusiasms. It rewards deserving objects of admiration. It persuades people to take certain actions. It sells things. Sadly, in this "age of awesome", our words and phrases of acclaim are exhausted, all but impotent. Even so, we find ourselves defaulting to such habitual choices as "good", "great", and "terrific", or stock synonyms that tumble out of a thesaurus - "superb", "marvelous", "outstanding", and the like. The piling on of intensifiers such as "totally" only makes matters worse, while negative modifiers ("incredible", "unreal") render our common parlance nearly tragic. Until now.
Not to mince words, wunderkind of word-wonks Arthur Plotnik is proffering a well-knit wellspring of worthy and wondrous words to rescue our worn-down usage. Plotnik is both hella AND hecka up to the task of rescuing the English superlative, offering readers the chance never to be at a loss for words of praise and acclamation!
©2011 Arthur Plotnik. All rights reserved. (P)2012 AudioGOListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
"The journey began on a gurney", writes Michael Perry, describing the debilitating kidney stone that led him to discover the essays of Michel de Montaigne. Reading the philosopher in a manner he equates to chickens pecking at scraps - including those eye-blinking moments when the bird gobbles something too big to swallow - Perry attempts to learn what he can (good and bad) about himself as compared to a long-dead French nobleman who began speaking Latin at the age of two.
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A beacon in a dark time
- By Damion on 01-13-18
By: Michael Perry
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Why Read Moby-Dick?
- By: Nathaniel Philbrick
- Narrated by: Nathaniel Philbrick
- Length: 2 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The New York Times best-selling author of seagoing epics now celebrates an American classic.Moby-Dick is perhaps the greatest of the Great American Novels, yet its length and esoteric subject matter create an aura of difficulty that too often keeps readers at bay. Fortunately, one unabashed fan wants passionately to give Melville's masterpiece the broad contemporary audience it deserves.
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A beautiful love letter to an amazing novel
- By Darwin8u on 10-20-12
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How to Write Short
- Word Craft for Fast Times
- By: Roy Peter Clark
- Narrated by: Roy Peter Clark
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In How to Write Short , Roy Peter Clark turns his attention to the art of painting a thousand pictures with just a few words. Short forms of writing have always existed - from ship logs and telegrams to prayers and haikus. But in this ever-changing Internet age, short-form writing has become an essential skill. Clark covers how to write effective and powerful titles, headlines, essays, sales pitches, Tweets, letters, and even self-descriptions for online dating services.
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Ironically long
- By Amazon Customer on 03-14-16
By: Roy Peter Clark
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Nudge
- Awakening Each Other to the God Who's Already There
- By: Leonard Sweet
- Narrated by: Dean Gallagher
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Pay attention. Brace yourself. This audio book is set to revolutionize your understanding of evangelism. That revolution stands to affect not just your everyday habits, including encounters you have with other people, but the very roots of your faith, the range of your mission, and the limits of your freedom. In the tradition of The Gospel According to Starbucks, this groundbreaking audio book dares to ask: Instead of bringing people to Jesus, how about joining Jesus in what he is already doing? Author Leonard Sweet challenges you to use all five senses to interact with God....
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#1 Book on Evangelism
- By Beyondk on 02-10-23
By: Leonard Sweet
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We Want Our Bodies Back
- Poems
- By: Jessica Care Moore
- Narrated by: Jessica Care Moore
- Length: 2 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Over the past two decades, Jessica Care moore has become a cultural force as a poet, performer, publisher, activist, and critic. Reflecting her transcendent electric voice, this searing poetry collection is filled with moving, original stanzas that speak to both Black women’s creative and intellectual power, and express the pain, sadness, and anger of those who suffer constant scrutiny because of their gender and race.
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Just beautiful.
- By @oil_house_ (IG) on 02-25-21
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The Glamour of Grammar
- By: Roy Peter Clark
- Narrated by: Roy Peter Clark
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Early in the history of English, glamour and grammar were the same word, linked to enchantment and magical spells. Now grammar brings to mind language bullies and bored-out-of-their-skulls students. Roy Peter Clark, one of America’s most influential writing teachers, wants to change that by putting the glamour back into grammar.
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Wasteful
- By ABID on 12-05-13
By: Roy Peter Clark
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Magical Negro
- Poems
- By: Morgan Parker
- Narrated by: Morgan Parker
- Length: 1 hr and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Magical Negro is an archive of black everydayness, a catalog of contemporary folk heroes, an ethnography of ancestral grief, and an inventory of figureheads, idioms, and customs. These American poems are both elegy and jive, joke and declaration, songs of congregation and self-conception. Focused primarily on depictions of black womanhood alongside personal narratives, the collection tackles interior and exterior politics - of both the body and society, of both the individual and the collective experience.
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Waste of time
- By Lida on 07-19-20
By: Morgan Parker
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La Passione
- How Italy Seduced the World
- By: Dianne Hales
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Can you imagine painting without Leonardo, opera without Verdi, fashion without Armani, food without the signature tastes of pasta, gelato, and pizza? The first universities, first banks, first public libraries? All Italian. New York Times best-selling author Dianne Hales attributes these landmark achievements to la passione italiana, a primal force that stems from an insatiable hunger to discover and create; to love and live with every fiber of one's being.
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Your Italiophilia is showing
- By Jeff Griffiths on 02-28-23
By: Dianne Hales
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The Smartest Book in the World
- A Lexicon of Literacy, a Rancorous Reportage, a Concise Curriculum of Cool
- By: Greg Proops
- Narrated by: Greg Proops
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The Smartest Book in the World is based on Proops' sensational, iTunes Top 10 podcast. The audiobook is a rollicking reference guide to the most essential areas of knowledge in Proops' universe, from the noteworthy names of the ancient world and baseball to the movies you must see and the albums you must hear.
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Great listen
- By Jonathan on 03-06-16
By: Greg Proops
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Nature
- By: Sam Torode - foreword, Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Narrated by: Sam Torode
- Length: 1 hr and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Nature" is perhaps the greatest original work of philosophy written by an American. This specially-prepared edition includes a foreword on the origin and significance the book.
By: Sam Torode - foreword, and others
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Finnegans Wake
- By: James Joyce
- Narrated by: Barry McGovern, Marcella Riordan
- Length: 29 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Finnegans Wake is the greatest challenge in 20th-century literature. Who is Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker? And what did he get up to in Phoenix Park? And what did Anna Livia Plurabelle have to say about it? In the rich nighttime and the language of dreams, here are history, anecdote, myth, folk tale and, above all, a wondrous sense of humor, colored by a clear sense of humanity. In this exceptional reading by the Irish actor Barry McGovern, with Marcella Riordan, the world of the Wake is more accessible than ever before.
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The keys to. Given!
- By hyand on 06-16-21
By: James Joyce